Microbes From Field Museum Dinosaur Going To Space

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:28:56 CDTBy: AP

Microbes collected from Sue, the Tyrannosaurus rex at Chicago's Field Museum, are headed to outer space. Museum officials say the microbes are among a set of 48 microbes scheduled to go to the International Space Station on Sunday. It's part of the Project Merccuri effort. The project will investigate how microbes from four dozen different places on Earth compare with those already found on the space station. A Field Museum paleontologist swabbed the surface of the 67-million-year-old Sue's bones to get the microbes. They were studied and chosen by scientists at the University of California at Davis. The microbes are scheduled to depart on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center near Orlando, Fla.